every moment has its own signature

A recurrent theme has been a common thread throughout the past 2 weeks. Whether explicity finding itself through explicit means or implicitly strongly imposing itself through, it seems to be "the theme" of this time period with God. It goes something along the lines of this:

each moment & circumstance (whether each mini-chapter of the day consists of an hour, 15 minutes, 1 minute, or even 10 seconds) is unique, with many different factors from the previous one as well as future ones.

I am not called to nor should I use what worked before (to commune with God and practice his presence) in other unique moments/circumstances to find, be empowered, & carry out God's will in it. I should not put God's will and/or the Holy Spirit's guidance in a box & subconsciously work at life formulaicly. Not only is the Christian life not meant to be like that, it's also boring that way. God is alive and although his character never changes, he is a spontaneous conversationalist and can & will frequently surprise his children. He is also infinitely creative and can & does come at us at an infinite variety of angles.


I like Thomas Kelly's thinking when he says:

Symbols are stationary, unchanging, frozen, while the Life of the Spirit which they symbolize is flowing, growing, changing, ever becoming richer. If we were successful, in any moment, in devising a symbolic expression absolutely adequate to represent the richness of our soul's experience of the Divine Life, then the next moment, and certainly the next day and the next year will find that symbol to be in some degree inadequate, antiquated, obsolete. For the Spirit's working, if we keep alive and sensitive to Him, is ever leading us into new vistas of truth, where the pastures become greener and the still waters greater beneath their limpid mirror"


A related theme to thsi is that I should not formulaicly impose how God is uniquely working in me to transform me & his interaction methods with me on others without any flexibility or discernment. This "messianic" way of regarding my unique pathway(s) to God should not be rigidly assigned to every Christian. Sometimes, the timing is not right. The Holy Spirit can work in however/whatever ways he wants & is not limited by the shackles of anyt radition. The only constant is his creative/flexible/fresh/variant methods which we have to keep an alert spiritual eye out for. This, in a way, can be liberating & make life all the more exciting! This way, each day has the possibility of having one's inner life unfold like a gripping novel/movie where one doesn't know what's going to happen next, but just has to wait for what the storywriter has planned to unfold. As the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Unpredictability (under the context of a good and non-evil storywriter) brings vigour, freshness, liveliness, & novelty to life. For the Christian, if one's outer world is not constantly shaken up, at least one's inner world should be.

The importance of both balance & variety, discernment & prudence. The possibility of thousands of angles & perspectives to view an issue or experience an existential reality. Throughout the past 10 days or so, God has been imbuing this theme to be constantly through different means. These include conversations with Bobby & Pui Wing, reading "A testament of devotion" by Thomas Kelly, reading the foreword of "The Sacrament of the Present Moment" by Richard Foster, stuff by Tilden Edwards, reading "Prayer" by Richard Foster, reading some of the Conversations Journal, some devotionals of Jan Johnson, and some crazy insights about metacognition (& the nature of thought expressed in language) while reading a novel called "Blink" by Ted Dekker. The only constant is to be open to the Spirit's often unpredictable movings that have a fresh & original scent of "divine sacrament" to each new moment.

Negative evidence in favour of this are looking at those Bible verses I wrote down & posted around in my room which at the time of writing them I was so impressed & deeply moved by the Spirit to write, memorize & embed them into my heart. Now, often times, I do not feel as moved as I did when I first wrote and posted these verses. As long as I still believe it is the Word of God & that I should submit to it, I don't think I should feel guilty by not being as moved by them as I was at the time of originally writing and posting them.

A good analogy to capture the essence of this theme in the past couple weeks is C.S. Lewis' analogy of the piano with all its appropriate array of keys, each which should be played only at the appropriately called time, that is when the melody that the composer wrote indicated on the music sheet shows that the timing is right for each unique & different note to strike at a certain moment. Certain keys which are perfectly appropriate to be played at their appropriate times should not be played during others. I'm always called to be "in tune" with the melody of God's musical will, but the melody is different every moment, whether God calls me to glorify him through concentrated praying, reading a book, washing dishes, talking to friends, or sleeping. To do one at the inappropriate time (even if well-intentioned) can screw up the beautiful melody. Done properly the result is a beautiful harmonious piece of music, that is, music for the soul.


Here are excerpts from a couple quotes I read which have really been jiving with my soul.

For [Caussade] Christ comes to us in a new and living way each day - indeed, each moment. What was a means of God's grace one moment may become a hindrance the next, since we worship a living Lord, not a static ritual. Hear the daring words of de Caussade: "These blessed results are not produced by any particular circumstance but by what God ordains for the present moment. What was best a moment ago is so no longer because it is removed from the divine will, which has passed on to be changed to form the duty to the next. And it is that duty, whatever it may be, that is now most sanctifying for the soul." We have in these words the invitation to the quickening life of hearing and obeying, rather than the stifling lief of rules and regulations. De Caussade continues, "If the divine will ordains that reading is the duty to the present moment, reading achieves that mysterious purpose. If the divine will abandons reading for an act of contemplation, that duty will bring about a change of heart and then reading will be harmful and useless." For those who want a life clear-cut and well-defined, such words will feel threatening. But for those who, like myself, have tried the way of law and found it wanting, de Caussade's words sweep over us like a spring breeze inviting us to the adventure.

one's diction can affect one's spiritual experience

I love reading Dallas Willard'sbooks. Any of the Christian books that he writes. There are a lot of reasons why, but I think that one of the biggest ones is that he uses everyday language to explain what exactly certain "Christian terms" mean. And I really mean "normal/everyday" language.

Terms like "the Kingdom of God", "the grace of God", "in the name of Jesus", "grow in the grace of God", being filled with the Spirit", "focussing on the things that are invisible, and not visible", "spiritual power" etc are Biblical, but the problem is, if the only way to define them is with other words and terms that are only in the Bible, we just have certain understandings of Christian terms within the "world of the Bible" and have trouble talking about what it means to be Christ-like while watching a baseball game, lining up for a coffee, or going to class (that is, of course, without recycling Christian vocabulary in circular definitions that never have any definitions outside of the Bible).

Dallas Willard is very serious about explaining all these "Christian terms" with precise everyday language. The result is that the way a Christian talks about weather, sports, politics is as natural with the everyday "normal" vocabulary that one talks with one's secular friends.

I think that the words that we use come from certain contexts, one can even say they come from "mini-worlds". I think if everytime we talk with our friends about Christian topics but use words only from the "mini-world" of theological vocabulary from Bible or Bible-related terminology (that has definitions only within the self-referencing circle of other "Christian terms"), but switch to a completely different "mini-world" of vocabulary with its own references, the result is a fragmanted life. If I have to use a certain set of vocabulary when talking about God in specifically "holy settings" while switching to a completely different set of vocabulary in a "non-holy settings", no matter why I would find it so difficult to "bridge" the two worlds, something that most of us Christians agree we should be doing, yet don't do.

When I raed Dallas or listen to his talks, it seems like the vocabulary that he's using to describe the substance/content of the Bible is the same set of words I'd hear John Madden use to commentate on Football, the same set of words Peter Mansbridge would use to describe the evening news, and the same set of words my psychology professor would use to describe psychology 101 material. The result is that Dallas has helped me to bridge the world of the Bible and the modern world that I live in. Since he has taught me to use the same set of vocab (both when I talk to others as well as talk to myself in my mind), I see one world, and it is easier to keep God on my mind, practise his presence, view the world as Christ views it, and use a Christian worldview to interpret normal everyday situations withotu forcing associations with things unnaturally without any contextualization.

I get so refreshed each time i read and/or re-read his writings.

On a related note, I think that I am learning about the importance of getting socially refreshed as a means towards maintaining and even building up my passion for God and His Kingdom. If I do not interact with other very passionate/on-fire Christians for God at least once every couple days, I can see my passion slowly starting to fade. I think God made it that way, so that we need to depend on each other to a certain extent to remain passionate and on fire for Him and His Kingdom, and that we can't do it ourselves.

I acces this "spiritual social refreshment" namely in two ways:
1)Being in the physical presence of other passionate Christians. Just listening to them share passionately about God and His Kingdom rubs passion off on me. The cool thing too, is that when I get an opportunity to express my passion about Kingdom related things that I'm passionate about to other passionate friends, the passion just gets reinforced inside me as well.
2)When I read books from authors (dead or alive) who was/are passionate about God and His Kingdom. These books, I am discovering more and more, having such a profound impact on me it is insane. Just reading the right books (I am starting to appreciate dead authors more and more) is like a dose of spiritual adrenaline to keep me going, running hard, and storming in the front lines for God.

The power of social influence. I'm glad that God designed it this way.

clips from a dallas willard interview by Ortberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwXFP1U7f5U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_nsEoQKhY

I think the western church really needs to hear this guy

Interviews about Christian Mysticism

beauty in the balance

It has been absolutely encouraging for the past two weeks to attend UofT's summer Campus for Christ weekly meetings and just see the crazy growth that has occured over the two years I was gone. Amazing.

I think they have more frosh than the total members of when I was there two years ago. I even think they have more people in positions of leadership than the total members of when I was there two years ago. Rewind back to 5 years ago, when there were only 10 steady, consistent members. I would have never guessed this exponential growth 5 years ago when I first started to attend.

I thank God for the good leadership that he's provided at Campus for Christ. I truly believe that Campus for Christ is one of the few good role models of "Christian campus groups" we have today. In my severely biased opinion, they have no serious/big flaws, although they are not perfect since it is a group composed of humans. However, this group not only talks in comfortably insulated bubbles with tags and titles outside of it that say their mission is the Great Commission. They walk the Great Commission too. They actually get out and do stuff, and they also have a strategic plan on doing so. Praise God for Campus for Christ, I'm so thankful that God used Campus for Christ to mold me into the person I am now.

Some of the key ways I have been shaped by C4C has been:

1. To be proactive and be a change-agent. Not to wait for my Christian leaders to tell me to do something before I go and do it. While I shouldn't disrespect and be unsubmissive to authority, I shouldn't wait for them to tell me to do something before I start doing it. I need to take the initiative not only inspite leaders not telling me to do anything, but especially when I'm in a situation where leaders don't tell the people they're leading to do something.

2. To be teachable and not be afraid to fail and admit failure

3. Selection. To weed out people who really don't care about the Great Commission. (I'm not talking about kicking them out of the church, but not to invest the valuable and limited time that God has given me into people who don't even care about God's stuff [the GC])

4. Spiritual multiplication. Why spiritual multiplication is more biblical, effective in the long-term, and more strategic than spiritual addition. Great concepts in the book "The master plan of evangelism" by Robert Coleman

Thanks God, for Campus for Christ







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A theme that God has been reminding me of lately is just the importance of balance in order to have a vibrant, vivacious, overall healthy relationship with Him

In highschool and university, I bounced back in forth through seasons of emphasizing loving God with all my "mind" and loving God with all my "heart" (or at least what I understood about loving God with my "heart", for I am realizing that our modern understanding of "heart" in our culture is pretty different from what the Biblical writers meant). Sometimes, I was overbalancced in one area so when I realized the need to fill the other area, the pendulum swung pretty hard towards the other extreme and I neglected the other. Then I tried to learn a balance in proportion of the two.

However, in the past two years in East Asia, I have learned so much about the biases of "Western Christian thinking" that I was completely oblivious to all the previous years of my life! Not only were there cultural blindspots that I discovered that us Westerners have, but these blindspots affected my relationship with God!

Before, I only thought that there were 2 mediums of how I were to build my relationship with God. If it were not with the intellectual pursuit of the knowledge of God, then it was through the strong affective/emotional experiences accessed through the worship of God through the "heart". I was completely oblivious to experiencing God deeply through my will (decision making/motives), my physical body, and also my intuitive experiential knowledge of the mysterious spiritual realm, the latter of which I am becoming really interested in in this phase of my life.

I realized that this bias (of only emphasizing or validating experiencing God through the mind or the "heart") comes from a very limited view of the Christian walk that has only started about a few centuries ago (through the influence of some historical periods such as the Enlightenment, as well as the Reformation). This had led most of us western Christians to only validate, or at most take serious notice of experiencing God through intellectually driven stuff like Wayne Grudem or emotionally laden stuff Max Lucado, or a mix of both cateogiries that land on different locations of the same contiuum of both mind and heart.

And this framework of "mind or heart", I realized recently, is very culturally relative. I am not talking about the existence of the "mind" or "heart" that is relative, but the exclusive notice of the two, while neglecting other fundamental faculties of the self (will, physical body, spiritual intuition), is completely characteristic of modern western Christianity within the confines of western countries for just about a few centuries.

I have started to dabble into earlier Christians (who weren't affected by the Enlightenment or the Reformation), and noticed that their paradigm is pretty different from us. If one reads the writings, or even quotes from the desert fathers, the medieval mystics, the catholic monasteries, the eastern orthodox masters, it is so different from John Piper, Johnathan Edwards, and John MacCarthur (I'm not hating on these guys, I'm sure they are God-loving, Bible-believing followers of Christ). This discovery of different tools to spiritually "feast" upon God was almost as dramatic as my discovery that in the middle-east and some Muslim countries, they eat all their food (including rice with other dishes) with their hands, and that utensils are as rare as typewriters these days.

I have to be careful now. Now that I am on a journey to supplement these different faculties of my being in experiencing God (will, body, spiritual intuition), that I do not repeat the mistakes of history by swinging the pendulum too hard to the other side and completely neglect intellectual theological knowledge (which I previously liked and still do), as well as "hillsong happy clappy" experiences of the heart. But to put them in a bigger unified/holistic context of the overall human self.

I think experiencing the reality of God through additional God-given faculties is just like experiencing physical reality through one of the additional five senses of one only previously had two of them. Imagine someone who only had the 2 senses of smell and taste, but didn't have hearing, seeing, or feeling all their life. Then one day, they start to hear, see, and physically feel. That person feels more alive to physical reality. Something has happened to me similarly in the realm of walking with God.

I must be careful to maintain the balance though.